Silver Arrow
by rellimmes
Summary: There's more to a good story than meets the eye, and the Winter Soldier is no different. What happened that day with the Black Widow and the KGB scientist, that was between them, and they both knew it. She had no right to let Captain America in on that, but even when she did, it didn't matter. There were several documented reports of that incident, and none of them was the truth- n


**There's more to a good story than meets the eye, and the Winter Soldier is no different. What happened that day with the Black Widow and the KGB scientist, that was between them, and they both knew it. She had no right to let Captain America in on that, but even when she did, it didn't matter. There were several documented reports of that incident, and none of them was the truth- not all of it, anyways. Slight Clintasha, SOME SPOILERS FOR 'THE WINTER SOLDIER'. **

**Silver Arrow**

_Nat's POV _

"I know who killed Fury."

Steve's eyed searched hers for the truth, boring into hers, blue upon green, but found nothing as to indicate anything suspicious or out of context- just as she wanted it. She knew he wouldn't have dwelt on it for too long, because for all of his good qualities he wasn't a very good liar or good at detecting lies. That much had been very clear the moment he'd opened his mouth after Nick Fury had died and told her he didn't know why the Director had been at his apartment. She'd been ready to kill him then, and sort of still did now, because she really hated it when people lied to her. But what did that make her, exactly? She'd lied plenty of times, and gotten in trouble for a few of them too.

It wasn't that she was lying now, though; for once in her life everything on that report and everything she was telling the good Captain had actually happened, in that specific order. Not all of it, of course. A girl had to have her secrets, didn't she? Thankfully, Natasha Romanoff had plenty of those, some of them even S.H.I.E.L.D. and the former K.G.B. didn't know about, things she'd collected over the years in case she'd ever need leverage over anyone. God knows she'd seen enough about the President's personal life to give him a heart attack, but she figured she'd save those for when she actually needed them.

Steve's shoulders finally relaxed a bit and he released hold of her, but there was still only a few inches of space between them. His eyes narrowed in her direction. "Who?"

The spy frowned, and suddenly an unexpected memory came floating up to the front row of her mind. Man, she really didn't want to think about that. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists," she told him. "The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's a ghost. You'll never find him."

He looked at her and started firing off questions, and she answered them mindlessly, never thinking, not stopping, with no consideration of what she knew and what he didn't. She couldn't bring herself to tell him everything, because that would have let him in way too far than she needed him to be. That conversation didn't matter, didn't come up, and never would. What Steve Rogers didn't know wouldn't hurt him- not in this case at least.

_Bucky's POV _

They couldn't see him, but he could see them, and he wanted to keep it that way. Even when he was on a high profile assignment he liked to keep off the grid as much as possible, because any more publicity would've distracted him from his mission and resurrected a ghost that should've passed on years ago, and his bosses had never really cared for things like that. It was too messy to clean up, and he was the poster boy of a clean job.

But this, this wasn't just a mess- this was an unnatural disaster. Despite what his bosses would have had him believe, he retained more about his past missions than he let on, and she was no different. No, she _was_ different; he just wasn't sure if that was good or bad yet. He reckoned that if she had ever been a liability he would have killed her before now, but he'd never received orders about her before, so he didn't. He never knew why, but he couldn't. Or he wouldn't. It was impossible to tell these days.

He was certain she would have to die, but what HYDRA didn't know wouldn't hurt them. He'd never actually told his bosses, whoever they were at the time, the specifics of what had gone down with that KGB nuclear physicist some years ago, and by the way she was talking she hadn't told anyone either, until now. She didn't look that much different than she did now; older, wiser, and definitely more dangerous, but still the young woman she was when they'd first met. He remembered every single detail, and by the way she tactfully avoided certain aspects of Captain America's questioning she did too. The memory freshly reappeared at the forefront of his mind with a simple beckoned call, one of the few that hadn't been hazed over with the cryogenic freezing.

_He'd just blown up the van chauffeuring his target, a large black vehicle that was probably the easiest thing to spot all day. There had been no hesitation when he shot, and there was nothing holding him back when he approached the smoldering wreckage, stepping over the scorched bodies of the agents as he did so. He had long since grown accustomed to the smell of burning flesh, and with flawless precision he aimed three bullets directly through the battered metal and fired. _

_He had been expecting the short pained yelp that came with one of the shots that killed him, but the Winter Soldier had very much surprised to hear a long, gut-wrenching scream that accompanied it. There had obviously been another agent in there. He would have left right then and there and just left the poor person trapped in the rubble to bleed out, but something told him he'd better not take the chance of leaving a survivor. He grasped the mangled remains of the car door with his metal arm and torn it open, coming face to face with the two bruised and bloody bodies underneath. _

_The nuclear physicist was dead, that much was apparent; his skull was cracked with the impact and there was a large bullet hole in his chest. The agent was still alive, their lifeblood slowly leaking out onto the ground through a black form-fitting body suit, which had been backed up against the scientist's body guarding it from attack. The wound was a through-and-through, hitting nothing vital but definitely threatening if they didn't receive medical attention soon. The agent rolled over onto their back, away from the wreckage, and at once he could tell that she was a woman, a curved pretty thing with dark red hair and hateful green eyes glaring daggers at the foot of his dirty black combat boots. _

_She had been reaching for her gun, which was only a foot away, but her leg was trapped behind a piece of shrapnel and the Winter Soldier had already kicked it away. She was too weak to reach for her other boot, which he knew held a second pistol and two throwing knives, so he let her be, staring down at her with plagued fascination. _

_He didn't know if she was S.H.I.E.L.D. or not, but she could have been either that or the K.G.B. given that she was guarding a Soviet asset. He hadn't been expecting her, the infamous Black Widow who held total allegiance to no one and was possibly the only even-matched threat he would face. HYDRA hadn't told him that she would be here, but then again, they might not have known. Nothing was certain, even in an intelligence community that assumed he was a myth told to scare those who even considered deserting their respective agencies. The woman stared back at him, her bloodshot eyes scanning him like an X-ray, not leaving anything up for debate or chance. He didn't like the way she looked at him, so fearless and unafraid of him or the death that might come from their encounter. _

_He wasn't sure what he was doing until he spoke, and he did so without so much as filtering what it was that he was going to say. "You're stuck."_

_It was a stupid comment, and he despised him for it. She managed a sarcastic, poisonous smile. "No, just hanging out underneath a burning car for fun," she snapped, attempting to pull her leg free but to no avail. "You should try it sometime- when you're not blowing people up, that is." _

_He frowned underneath his mask. "I prefer to stay on top of things."_

_She groaned. "I noticed." She met his gaze with a cold one of her own, an emotionless façade that he knew wouldn't break easily. "Look, if you're going to kill me get it over with. I'd prefer to meet my maker without having sworn in the past few hours, and you're making that pretty difficult for me right now." She took a sharp, painful breath in. _

"_You're not my mission," he replied, somewhat matter-of-factly. "It would only make things more complicated."_

"_And talking to your would-be victim like a co-worker isn't?" the Black Widow fired back. She looked over him again. "So you're the Winter Soldier. I thought you were just a legend."_

_The assassin shrugged. "And now you know better." He inclined his head, taking in the scene. "They told me you might be here." It was a lie, and she knew it, but she played the card dealt anyways. "Who are 'they'?" _

_For the first time that day he actually, genuinely smiled. "Nice try."_

"_The people who hired you? The agency you work for?"_

"_Do you honestly think I would tell you?"_

_That shut her up, but only for a second. Her mind was whirling a million miles an hour, even in as much pain as she was. "It was a shot," she sighed, and almost immediately she tensed up. The bullet hole in her side wasn't going away any time soon. She glanced over at it and grimaced. "I guess no more swimsuits for a while."_

_He shrugged. "I think you'll look fine."_

_She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I'm not sure whether that was a complement or not." He holstered his gun, slung his rifle over his shoulder and turned away, back towards the way he'd come and the bosses who awaited his successful report. "You don't have to accept it if you don't want to." He proceeded to walk away, but her voice stopped him. _

"_You won't get away with this," she told him, her tone getting softer and softer by the minute. She wouldn't be conscious in a few more minutes. "I already radioed for the back-up team. My partner's on his way; he'll hunt you down, and you won't have time to rethink what is it that you just did."_

"_I'll be long gone by then," he replied nonchalantly. "And you won't have anything to tie me to this except an eyewitness account given by an agent whose history is just as questionable as her mission." A shimmer of silver caught his eye, and he found a small, simple arrow dangling from her neck. It seemed so unlike her, even with the little time and information he knew, for her to wear even an ounce of jewelry on an assignment like this. "Boyfriend?"_

_It caught her off guard, and it took a light-headed Black Widow a few seconds to gather her remaining wits to figure out what it was that he was referring to. She looked at the necklace. "Yeah, something like that." She laid her head on the ground the closed her eyes, breathing in and exhaling slightly. He frowned. "Shame. You seem nice, for a rival assassin."_

"_You really think I'm nice?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. The Winter Soldier's lips tugged into a smile one last time. "No." And to some extent he meant it, and to another he didn't, but it didn't matter. She'd already lost consciousness. _

_The sound of fast approaching helicopters whistled through the air, and he took off away from the crime scene, hiding himself away in a corner nor far from it, just within eyesight and earshot. He could see a black plated hummer roll up beside the wreckage and a blonde haired man bolt out of the passenger side before it even stopped. He had a fully-loaded quiver slung over his back and a bow clutched tightly in his hand, but he threw it aside and knelt down beside the Black Widow the moment he spotted her. _

"_Nat!" he shouted, taking her up in his arms and trying to jolt her awake. Her blood was all over his hands and her red hair was terribly matted with it, but he didn't care and gently brushed it away from her face. "C'mon Nat, stay with me! Medic, I need a medic!"_

_Not one, not two but three doctors came out of nowhere, and no one them tried to take her out of his hands, but the man stood up and pulled her away. "I stay with her, no exceptions."_

"_Agent Barton, your partner's extremely unstable. If she's going to make it we have to airlift her immediately." Without any more delay the three medics lifted her up into a helicopter and took off, leaving the archer standing right where they'd left him. He shook his fist at them and screamed "If you die Natasha Romanoff, I'll kill you!" Then he sank to the ground beside his bow, with his head in his hands, too stunned to speak. _

_The Winter Soldier quietly slid out from his position and disappeared into the shadows and background noise around him, leaving the agents to do their jobs and the wreckage he left behind to burn. He'd leave out the part about the Black Widow being a part of his mission simply because there was no reason for his bosses to know, and with that he buried the memory far back inside his skull and left it to rot. _

Except it didn't rot, even after all these years and all the assignments he'd completed in HYDRA's name. He would pull it out ever so often, relish it just because he could, because it was the only real memory he could ever hold onto. He'd always maintained that it was their little secret, something they shared even when there was no other connection between them. He didn't quite understand why he considered it that way, just that he had. She had no right to let Captain America in on that… but, then again, it didn't really matter. He knew she hadn't gone _that_ far into detail simply because if she had the two of them would have still been talking, not into the wind looking for a suitable computer to unlock whatever it was that was no Fury's flash drive.

Besides, there were so many documented reports of that incident, and none of them told the entire truth. He'd made sure of that, and so did she. Those parts were safe- at least for now.

_Nat's POV_

Three hours after she'd spoken to Congress she returned home, relieved that nothing inside it had changed even while her entire world had come crashing down around her like London Bridge. A window had been left open, and though she didn't remember ever touching it she didn't exactly worry. She wasn't going to stay here long; all her covers were blown along with all S.H.I.E.L.D. intelligence she'd personally leaked onto the web, and it wouldn't take long for all of the enemies she'd made over the years to find her. It would only take her a few hours to come up with a completely new identity. She was a spy, an assassin, a hacker who knew the tools of the trade better than anyone.

The name Odessa Blair sounded nice- a waitress in Chicago with no connection to the Black Widow, Washington D.C. or anything Natasha Romanoff ever came in contact with. She might dye her hair blonde or some unnatural color like blue, wear color contacts to hide who she really was to the rest of the world. No one would know what happened to her, and even fewer people would care. And that was just fine with her.

She packed what few things were hers- her clothes, weapons, personal items- into a suitcase, took one final look around her apartment and headed for the door. S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided it for her once she'd joined, but she'd never liked the lime green coating the walls that the European designer obviously thought would look good with the European-esque theme. Clint had especially loathed it, and often complained that even after everything they'd done to defeat Loki in New York those months ago they wouldn't let them paint over it.

The Russian was surprised to see an orange sticky note stuck to the back of her door, and she curiously plucked it off and read it. A few days ago the simple knowledge of the author might have scared her, but she was the Black Widow and after the time she'd had nothing much frightened her anymore. In black Sharpie the message waited for her in all caps:

_DON'T TELL  
ANYONE  
EVER AGAIN_

She knew who it was from, she knew what it was about, and to her surprise it didn't bother her. For some unique reason she knew right off the bat it wasn't a threat but a plea, and she felt obligated to keep it, if not for Cap's sake for his. God knew he'd been through hell the past 50 years.

She found a blue pen and turned the slip of paper over, scrawling her reply before pasting it back on the door. Behind her the curtain by her window drifted in the afternoon breeze, and she smiled knowing how it was that that her window was open. Then, without a second thought, she opened the door and sealed the apartment for good. The sticky note unattached itself from the door and drifted down to the floor, resting at the tip of a pair of dirty black combat boots.

ALWAYS

**So, this is my first Avengers/Captain America fic ever and my first crossover (well, kinda), so if you could kindly tell me what you think that'd be great. R&R!**

**Rellimmes **


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